Adding streets to Google Maps

Charles Syrett

Posted 07 April 2008 - 06:31 PM

Charles Syrett

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One of my clients is a yellow pages directory publisher in a small city in the Midwest USA. We've been doing their paper maps for years, and he says all the local delivery services choose them over all the other available maps. Now he's expanding to an online directory that uses Google Maps, which he's found to be grievously out-of-date compared with ours. Google told him he can have more up-to-date streets available on his site for "only" an extra $10,000.00. Now he's asking me whether it's possible (technically) to add new streets ourselves to Google maps while continuing to use the rest of its functionality. This is not an area I'm very familiar with. Any suggestions?

Hans van der Maarel

Posted 08 April 2008 - 12:54 AM

Hans van der Maarel

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One of my clients is a yellow pages directory publisher in a small city in the Midwest USA. We've been doing their paper maps for years, and he says all the local delivery services choose them over all the other available maps. Now he's expanding to an online directory that uses Google Maps, which he's found to be grievously out-of-date compared with ours. Google told him he can have more up-to-date streets available on his site for "only" an extra $10,000.00. Now he's asking me whether it's possible (technically) to add new streets ourselves to Google maps while continuing to use the rest of its functionality. This is not an area I'm very familiar with. Any suggestions?

You could make your own map of the city and export that as a Google Maps tileset. Global Mapper can easily do this. This will effectively create a new layer within Google Maps (obviously only on your client's website) with that map.

Charles Syrett

Posted 08 April 2008 - 07:52 AM

You could make your own map of the city and export that as a Google Maps tileset. Global Mapper can easily do this. This will effectively create a new layer within Google Maps (obviously only on your client's website) with that map.

Not as far as I know, and a quick search of the Manifold forums doesn't show up anything. However, I can really recommend Global Mapper for this (less than $300, so I doubt it's going to be a big budget drain).

Dale Sanderson

Posted 08 April 2008 - 12:05 PM

...Google told him he can have more up-to-date streets available on his site for "only" an extra $10,000.00...

That's an interesting statement. I wonder if that means Google API's serve TeleAtlas map data by default, but for an extra $10k they'll upgrade you to Navteq data? (If so, then my guess is your client still wouldn't be satisfied with the currentness of the streets. In general I've found Navteq is a little more accurate than TeleAtlas [at least in the US], but they can still be a few years behind, and even more than that in smaller towns.)

Hans van der Maarel

Posted 08 April 2008 - 12:14 PM

Hans van der Maarel

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That's an interesting statement. I wonder if that means Google API's serve TeleAtlas map data by default, but for an extra $10k they'll upgrade you to Navteq data? (If so, then my guess is your client still wouldn't be satisfied with the currentness of the streets. In general I've found Navteq is a little more accurate than TeleAtlas [at least in the US], but they can still be a few years behind, and even more than that in smaller towns.)

It does make you wonder what their plan is. If there is no more reliable/accurate data available, how will they handle that? Go out with GPS receivers and map the town themselves?

Kalai Selvan

Posted 21 May 2008 - 11:59 PM

...Google told him he can have more up-to-date streets available on his site for "only" an extra $10,000.00...

That's an interesting statement. I wonder if that means Google API's serve TeleAtlas map data by default, but for an extra $10k they'll upgrade you to Navteq data? (If so, then my guess is your client still wouldn't be satisfied with the currentness of the streets. In general I've found Navteq is a little more accurate than TeleAtlas [at least in the US], but they can still be a few years behind, and even more than that in smaller towns.)

Its need of todays mapping biz, that each one of our customer wants their map to be in google, as already suggested by the forum, you can add up your own street in your machine, but remember what ever addition that you are doing will not make any impact on the Google server, unless you try to share your data, if not what ever updates that you do on the google earth will be stored and is viewable in your machine only... its more of a static map, which can't be viewed by someone else.